


Tony Stark's Best Friends Club

by YouCanJive



Series: Time is the Longest Distance (Between Two Places) [13]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Am going to tag it just in case, Angst, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Mentions of War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, is this angst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-22 08:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20871071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouCanJive/pseuds/YouCanJive
Summary: Darcy woke up on the morning of her Italian final with a knot in her stomach.





	1. Rhodey

Darcy was in the library, reviewing (who was she kidding? She was _cramming_) for her Italian final, when her phone buzzed.

It wasn’t an especially loud buzz, but she was in the library on the day before finals started, so practically the entire Culver student body heard it and turned to look for the disturber of the peace.

Lisa and Divya looked on sympathetically as Darcy flushed and sank lower into her seat. She was about to send the call to voicemail when she noticed the number flashing on the screen was Rhodey’s.

It wasn’t unusual for Rhodey to call her, but he rarely did it in the middle of the day like this, and she was pretty sure he was meant to be traveling for some Stark Industries event with Tony somewhere – Afghanistan, maybe? Or Pakistan? She couldn’t recall.

In any case, it was unusual enough that she figured she should take it. Italian could wait.

“Hey,” she whispered into the phone, trying to get out of her seat and out to a hallway or empty corner where she could chat, “give me a sec, I’m in the library.”

“Crap, Darcy, I forgot you had finals,” Rhodey apologized. “I can leave you to it.”

“No, no, it’s no problem. I needed a break anyway,” she assured him. After a glance down a couple hallways revealed no empty corners or study rooms (really, what had she been expecting?), Darcy decided to just head out and take the call out on the quad. “Almost there, then I can talk. But what’s up, Rhodester? I thought you were traveling today.”

“Yea, so did I,” he laughed. “Guess what fool is holding up the whole thing?”

Now that he mentioned it, Darcy could hear the wind and what was likely the roar of engines in the background. He was calling from the airport.

“Mmm… Can I get a hint?” she asked, now at a normal volume as she’d finally made it outside. She blinked owlishly at the very bright May sun. How long had she been in the library, anyway?

“How’s this for a hint: he was supposed to get an award yesterday but was also a no-show there.”

“Oh, Rhodey,” Darcy breathed, the teasing tone entirely replaced by one of concern. “And you worked so hard on that introduction.”

Rhodey made a noise of agreement (or maybe just resignation) in the back of his throat.

“Did he give you a reason, at least?”

“Other than that he’d much rather gamble his money away with a couple co-eds on his lap? We really should have known better than to invite Tony Stark to a ceremony in Vegas and expect him to actually show up,” Rhodey ranted.

Darcy could tell, both by his tone and by the somewhat careless way in which he was speaking, that Rhodey was really upset this time. He usually tried to edit himself somewhat when he spoke with Darcy about these things otherwise.

“I don’t know, Darcy,” he continued, sounding defeated. “He tried to brush it off, said something about how it wasn’t really for him, it was for his father.” It was Darcy’s turn to hum in agreement now; she’d heard the same spiel a time or two herself. Rhodey paused, scoffed. “He called it the Degenerate of the Year Award.”

And there… Well, Darcy had to stop herself from snorting, because Tony had definitely been following her queue there.

When she’d read that Tony was getting the ARES award, she’d immediately forwarded him the article with a few choice comments and jokes about the military not even trying to disguise their misogyny and glorification of violence and war (“_Come on, who names an award to recognize collaboration with the army after Ares, god of violence and destruction in war? They could at least have gone with Athena, you know? She’s a war goddess, too, but of, like, thoughtful and strategic war. Might as well just own it and call it the Guns’r’Us Award._”).

It had been good-natured – Tony and Darcy still disagreed about Tony’s business, but they both knew full-well that they were not going to change the other’s minds, so they voiced their disagreements in this sort of playful ribbing when it became relevant.

(Tony receiving an award from the US military to recognize the “deep bonds of friendship and cooperation” between them definitely qualified as relevant.)

Darcy’s silence had dragged on too long, because Rhodey groaned.

“That one was on you, wasn’t it?”

“No…” she protested half-heartedly, because she had congratulated him on it, after all, even if she’d followed it up with a bit of shade. “I told him to go. Really. I know how much this meant to you. And to him, even if he won’t admit it.”

“It just doesn’t make sense. One minute he’s telling me how he doesn’t deserve this award and all that shit, then he’s going along with someone calling him ‘the Da Vinci of our age’ or some bull, literally, all within minutes. I just don’t get it.”

Darcy did.

She was pretty certain, without needing to know any more about the evening, that Tony had made the first statement to Rhodey alone, while the latter one had been made in public.

The Stark brand was built on an arrogant Stark, all smiles and confidence and decadence. Always leading the pack, reaching for the next thing, rolling out new project after new project without ever so much as acknowledging the possibility of failure. That had been Howard, and Tony couldn’t even contemplate not trying to live up to his father’s legacy.

But Tony (the real Tony, the one he only showed to Darcy and Rhodey, and maybe Pepper or Happy on a good day) was not that. Tony not only contemplated the possibility of failure, but he saw it everywhere around him – and it terrified him.

His arrogance wasn’t all for show. He _was _brilliant beyond even his father’s compare and he knew it. But it was constantly waging a battle against Tony’s fear of falling short where it mattered the most.

Howard’s urge to create more, think bigger, and cross all the lines had been driven by the certainty that he would never fail.

Tony’s was driven by the certainty he would, and the fear that nothing he’d made so far would be enough.

So no, Darcy was not surprised or confused by the dissonance between Tony’s two personas, by his playing into the narratives the press built for him just minutes after opening up to Rhodey (probably in the form of a joke, brushing it all off like it didn’t matter, like he wasn’t showing Rhodey his deepest and most vulnerable thoughts).

Really, if Rhodey weren’t so hurt at Tony’s perceived slight, he would not be confused either. This wasn’t his first rodeo, and he’d known Tony for much longer than Darcy, after all.

And the fact that Rhodey hadn’t gotten there quite yet told Darcy that, no matter what Rhodey said, this phone call was not about Tony and his self-destructive tendencies (though the Tony Stark’s Best Friends Club, membership: Darcy and Rhodey, had held plenty of calls about those over the years).

No, this phone call was about Rhodey and his hurt.

At least the Tony Stark’s Best Friends Club was well versed in these types of calls, too.

“Rhodey,” she started, gently, “you know Tony wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

“If he wasn’t gonna show, he should have told me,” Rhodey growled, but Darcy had had enough of these talks with him to know he’s more upset than angry. “I’m up there, talking about what a good friends he is and how _he’s always there for his friends_, and he has to go and make it all a joke. Make me a joke.”

“He didn’t meant to,” Darcy protested, even though she knew how hard that can be to believe. “Rhodey, your friendship means the world to Tony. This wasn’t about you. You know that.”

Rhodey took a deep breath. Darcy thought she could hear him pacing, but there was a growing rumble in the background that made it hard to tell.

“I know, but this isn’t –” Rhodey interrupted himself “– Darcy, I’m gonna have to go. Looks like the damn fool’s finally here.”

“Ok. You have my official, soulmate permission to kick his butt.”

Rhodey huffed out something that could have been a laugh, and Darcy relaxed slightly. “I’ll tell him it’s from you.”

“Please, do,” she responded. “You two have a safe flight. When do you head back?”

“Thursday. It’s just a quick trip: fly there, couple days of tests and hand-shaking, then back. When are you done with your finals?”

“Thursday,” she echoed, smiling. “So your little trip will give me just the right amount of time to finish my studying without you two to distract me. Talk to you on the flip side?”

“Count on it,” Rhodey promised. “Good luck with your exams.”

“Good luck with Tony.”

She could hear Tony’s voice very quietly in the background for a couple seconds (“Sorry, pal – car trouble”) before the line disconnected.

Darcy stood out in the sun for a few more minutes then headed back in. She had Italian conjugations to get back to.


	2. Tony

Darcy woke up on the morning of her Italian final with a knot in her stomach.

If she didn’t have a final to get to, she would have turned off her alarm and rolled back over to sleep some more.

As it was, she got up, threw on sweatpants and a t-shirt, tied her hair up, and grabbed a couple pens and her student ID before heading down to try and at least drink some coffee before the exam. (No point grabbing her phone or even her iPod when she would not be allowed to have them on her during the exam.)

As she nursed her coffee, the knot in her stomach seemed to expand into a general feeling of dread and unease that had her seriously contemplating asking Lisa for a Xanax.

But no, she had her final to take. And another one after that. This was all probably anxiety over that, anyway. She knew she should have studied harder.

With the Italian exam done (and easier than she had expected), though, Darcy still felt _wrong_ as she walked back to her dorm.

Back in her room, she sat on Gabby’s unoccupied bed so she could prop herself up against the wall and look out the window. She was shaky and her breaths seemed too shallow and she was starting to get anxious _about _feeling anxious, which was certainly not helping her case.

She should be running through her flashcards and formula sheet for her Physics exam that afternoon, but she couldn’t concentrate long enough to even remember where she’d left them.

_Relax_, she scolded herself.

It didn’t help.

Deciding after a while that maybe what she needed was a distraction, Darcy walked over to her desk and started up her laptop.

But when she pulled up Twitter, #TonyStark was trending.

_Oh, Tony_, she asked herself, _what did you do this time?_

She wasn’t sure what she expected to find when she clicked on the hashtag.

It certainly wasn’t

> _BREAKING: TONY STARK MISSING AFTER AMBUSH NEAR MILITARY BASE IN AFGHANISTAN_

Her first reaction was disbelief.

She reached for her phone, but there were no calls.

Surely, if her soulmate were missing, somebody would have called her.

(Who would have called, though? The only people who would know to do so were her parents, who were likely still asleep in the West Coast, or Tony and Rhodey, who were… Oh, God, did the article say anything about Rhodey?)

Darcy called Tony, but he didn’t pick up.

Neither did Rhodey.

Darcy rubbed her fingertips together, subconsciously trying to draw feeling back into them again.

She looked around, trying to figure out what to do, but her eyes kept drawing back to that terrible headline in bold, red print.

> _TONY STARK MISSING AFTER AMBUSH NEAR MILITARY BASE IN AFGHANISTAN _

She dialed again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Her vision was blurry and Darcy thought she might be crying but, honestly, she didn’t remember much after that.


	3. Darcy

_A massive explosion. _

_Their Humvee rocks. _

_Through the windshield, the Humvee ahead of them erupts in a fireball._

_He scrambles out of the Humvee._

_Tony. Where’s Tony?_

_The Humvee explodes behind him and the explosion sends him crashing down onto the sand._

_Where’s Tony? He can’t find Tony._

_He hears shouting and he tries to push himself up but – _

The pilot made an announcement on the overhead. Rhodey didn’t catch it, but it was enough to bring him back to the here-and-now.

And all of a sudden it was like that short doze, riddled with nightmares and memories as it had been, had been enough to clear his mind and make him realize what he hadn’t been able to before, after days and nights of searching for Tony.

“There’s a PR firestorm brewing over this,” General Gabriel had told Rhodey before he boarded the plane, but his anxious and sleep-deprived brain had not processed what that meant.

“There’s a PR firestorm brewing.”

Which meant it was out there. The world knew.

_Darcy _knew.

It was against practically every regulation to use your phone in a plane – especially a military one – but Rhodey could not care less as he scrambled for his phone, tucked into the side of his bag, turned off since they had first taken off, stateside, Tony sitting across from him and — _‘Go hang with the pilot,’ Tony had said. ‘You’ll get along.’ And Rhodey had done it, he’d left Tony behind, he’d opened the door to the cockpit and then – fire, and pain, and the sand under his hands, and he can’t find Tony. Where is Tony?_

Rhodey cursed when the phone finally came to life.

A couple missed calls from friends and colleagues.

Five from his mother, along with a text message asking him to call when he got back and saying she was praying for Tony.

Eight from Pepper Potts.

And eighty-seven from Darcy.

He scrolled through the call history with shaking fingers.

There were nine calls in close sequence from Thursday morning, East-Coast-time. That must be when the news had broken.

A few more calls that afternoon.

And then a series of calls with no apparent pattern, every few hours.

He noticed an accumulation of them at three in the morning on Saturday and did his best not to imagine Darcy, lying in her bed, unable to fall asleep, or freshly awake from a nightmare, or finally reaching the end of her rope after days of insomnia and panic, calling him over and over and over again, her hands shaking and her face wet with tears, getting no response but trying again and again and again, needing to hear his voice, needing him to tell her this was all a mistake, that sure, he could put Tony on the line, that the jerk had just lost his phone, and not — _‘Get down, Tony. Get the –.’ An explosion. The crunch of broken glass. Something pings off a smoldering Humvee and thuds in the dirt._

He looked back down at his phone screen and ran his hand over his face.

He couldn’t – wouldn’t want to – imagine what Tony’s call log must look like.

He made a mental note to get JARVIS to erase Tony’s call log before he ever had to see the evidence of Darcy’s descent into… He didn’t want to put words to it.

She hadn’t called again in the last twenty-six hours, but he couldn’t think about that yet.

It wasn’t like Rhodey hadn’t thought about Darcy.

When they’d gotten back to base, after he’d been debriefed but before he’d been allowed back out there, to go look for his best friend — ‘_You don’t understand, Sir, he’s out there!’_ —, General Gabriel had come to ask him who he needed to call.

Tony was a civilian and he flaunted his hatred of paperwork. Of course he hadn’t filled out the form that told the military who to call in case of — _Smoke. Machine gun fire. Tracers zip past._

Well, Rhodey could hardly have given them Darcy.

He’d pointed them to Pepper Pott’s information and that was that.

He would call Darcy.

Just as soon as he had Tony back and he could just say ‘Sorry he’s a little banged up,’ rather than… than… — _blood in the sand and a scream and – where’s Tony?_

“If he’s out there, we’ll get him,” General Gabriel had said. But he didn’t think he was. None of them did.

Just Rhodey. 

The army was only searching for the PR.

“_If he’s out there_,” he’d said.

And the world knew. Had known for days. 

Darcy knew.

What did she know? What were they saying?

He clicked his phone back to life and stared at that last call.

Just one, by itself.

After days of repeat calls in an endless loop.

Eighty-six calls over four days.

Then one final call, twenty-six hours ago.

And after that, silence.

_What had they said?_

They had barely landed before Rhodey dialed. He didn’t know what time it was, but the sun was out and that was good enough for him.

The phone rang. Once. Twice. Then…

“Hello?”

“Darcy?” he asked, probably too loudly, but he couldn’t care less.

“Um…” There was hushed conversation in the background, the sound of a door clicking shut, and Rhodey should have known – under any other circumstances, he would have recognized that this was not Darcy’s voice. “Darcy’s currently indisposed. This is her mother. Who is this?”

“Ma’am,” he made himself say, resolutely ignoring the thoughts flashing through his head about what exactly _indisposed_ meant. “My name is James Rhodes and I am a friend of your daughter’s,” a deep breath, “and of Tony’s.” The woman gasped and Rhodey took a second to steel himself. “Please, ma’am, could I speak with her?”

“I’m not sure…” She really did sound hesitant, so Rhodey waited as patiently as he could while she had a hushed conversation with somebody nearby. “I’m not sure how well it’ll go,” she finally said, and she sounded nearly as tired as Rhodey felt, “but we might as well try. Just give me one moment.”

Again, the sound of a door opening and of movement on the other end of the line as the woman – Darcy’s mother – went to find her. And then “Darcy, there’s somebody on the phone for you. I’m going to put it on speaker, alright?”

There was a short silence until Rhodey realized they were probably waiting for him to speak.

After hours thinking about this call, though, when the moment presented itself he didn’t know what to say.

“How’s it going, Cupcake?” he finally heard himself say, and he could have smacked himself.

Except than then he heard a gasp and a faint _clack_ that had to be the phone being picked up and taken off speaker mode. And then…

“Rhodey?”

Darcy’s voice was croaky and thin, but it was unmistakable. She somehow sounded heartbroken and overjoyed at once, and, finally hearing her voice, Rhodey could understand the feeling.

He closed his eyes and let his head rest back against his seat while he fought to push through the knot that had formed in his throat.

“Yea, Darcy,” he managed at last. “It’s me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday and I'll (make you) cry if I want toooo.  
But really, y'all, I don't know what's gotten me in this groove, but I've been writing the angstiest and most cry-inducing bits and pieces these last few days (including an Iron Man 2 bit that I'm so looking forward to sharing with y'all soon!).


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